From the Wreckage
by Feral Phoenix
Summary: Andrew Waltfeld knows that sometimes the little things are the best things to use when you're trying to reach someone in despair. Little things like coffee and a day away from the hospital, for instance. Friendship fluff, alternate endingish.


From the Wreckage

DISCLAIMER: Don't own Gundam SEED. Don't really like the real owners of Gundam SEED… but there's nothing much I can do about THAT, now can I? All characters, references, etc. are borrowed and will be put back. Except for maybe Rau-sama. Who is MINE anyway. (glowers possessively)

Andrew Waltfeld didn't like the look of the hospital from his first step into the building. The smiles of the nurses seemed forced; there was no real order or point of interest to the green-carpeted waiting room, in which various tired-looking Coordinator civilians sprawled in chairs, awaiting their calls inside. The faint sound of elevator music spiraled lazily through the air from an ancient-looking speaker overhead, droning like the pointless, mindlessly cheery tunes played in shopping malls. On top of that, there was a faintly odd scent about the place—not the disgusting odor that hung about nursing homes, but a light lemon-like smell that reminded Andy of dishwasher detergent.

The intern at the desk scowled suspiciously at his eternally tousled coffee-ground brown hair, dark eyes and skin, and scarred face, then at the old ZAFT army ID he was holding out at her. For all her inherent distrust, she couldn't fault his authority, and she grudgingly waved him through.

"You're looking for room 213, on the second floor," she said in a bored drawl. "Elevator's on your right. Next person?"

Andy walked in, shaking his head as he went. No, he didn't like this place one bit. It was certainly not where _he _would want to place an ex-soldier suffering from severe depression and PTSD in addition to his physical maladies.

The retired general felt a brief moment of awkwardness as he stepped out of the rickety elevator, which was odd enough for someone of his open and friendly persona; though he shoved it away, he reflected that maybe it wasn't the best idea for _him _to be paying the patient here a visit. After all, though the two of them had somehow always managed to get along, they'd still had too much of a personality conflict to really become friends with each other. Andy sometimes had trouble understanding why a man would want to shut himself up so securely in the misery of his own head and refuse to trust others; he didn't think much of that kind of self-induced paranoia and besides, he'd always preferred to hang out with much more outgoing people, like his old steady Aisha. So while he and the man he was heading in to visit had gone through military school together, often stopped for coffee or a drink and argued war ethics back and forth many a time, it wasn't like they'd been taken into each other's inner confidences or anything. They disagreed too much on too many subjects for that…

But he'd been informed about the whole truth of the matter, and it wasn't in his nature to let a fellow human being suffer so deeply all on his own. And so, here he was.

Room 213 loomed in Andy's vision. Checking the katakana on the nameplate just to be sure, he gently rapped the old-fashioned swing door with his knuckles and let himself in.

_I hate hospitals, _the ex-general thought to himself, grimacing as he looked around. The room was unbearably white—the sheer sterility of the white curtains, white bedsheets, white furniture, and black-and-white tiled floor made him wince. A man needed _color _in his life to keep him from going completely insane.

"Hey," he started, and frowned as the room's occupant didn't turn around to face him. Very carefully stomping out his initial irritation, he pulled the roller chair from the desk to the side of the hospital bed, staring pointedly at its occupant. "You paying attention, Rau le Creuset?"

"Andrew Waltfeld." There was no surprise, no real emotion in the former commander's voice; it was completely flat but for a slight edge of sarcasm. "I'm honored."

Andy stifled a sigh. At least Rau was _looking _at him now, though there wasn't any more to the blonde man's gaze than there had been to his voice to allow him some idea of what to say next.

He decided to go for slightly silly, trying to ease the tension. "Hey, don't be so serious all the time. You'll get even more wrinkles than you already have!"

Rau's blank gaze flashed with sudden pain, and he turned away again.

Andy winced. _It's not the man's fault that he was born with shortened telomeres, _he berated himself. _Give him a break and watch what you say._

"Sorry," he said belatedly. "I didn't mean that… the way it came out."

Silence. Rau wasn't the kind of man who forgot offenses easily.

He was sitting up in the hospital bed, wearing a plain white T-shirt that Andy suspected was typical fare of this ward. His aristocratically wavy, pale blonde hair had grown an inch or so since he'd come, and trailed listlessly over his shoulders. He'd folded his hands absently on the thin comforter of his bed, which made the IV needle taped into his arm almost disturbingly apparent. He'd gotten thinner; Andy wondered if it was true that he'd started refusing the food that the hospital workers brought him.

About a month ago, during the battle that had more or less decided the war, Rau's mobile suit, the Providence, had been badly enough damaged that most of its internal mechanisms had exploded. Among his other injuries, Rau had taken shrapnel in the left side of his face. He'd had his operation, and it seemed as though he'd be getting away with very light scarring, but the doctors Andy had talked to were still unsure if they'd managed to save the vision in Rau's left eye—it was too early to really tell. But the bandaging his facial injuries required—a heavy gauze pad over his eye, held in place by a circle of bandages that wound around his forehead like a headband and then over his eye and cheek to keep the gauze in place—meant that Rau could no longer wear his trademark white mask.

In Andy's eyes, the premature aging that had plagued Rau almost since birth didn't show as much as he'd been told it would. The worst of it was supposed to be on the left side of his face anyway, but all Andy really saw were the light creases between Rau's eyebrows and delicate shadows next to his eye and at the side of his mouth that might become fine lines in a few years, or sooner. Andy wasn't exactly into genetics, Coordinator or no, so he had no idea just how quickly Rau would continue to age. The only thing, he decided, that really made Rau seem old was the look of bleak exhaustion that clouded the deep cerulean blue of his visible eye.

But then again, it would make most people feel lost and hopeless to know that they probably wouldn't live past fifty.

Cloning had been made illegal in the early years of genetic alteration technology to keep just this kind of thing from happening. Modern science in all its glory still hadn't managed to find a solution to the telomere problem, and until it did, such things were rendered forbidden to spare the children of technology from having to live such a tragic and painful—not to mention unnaturally short—life.

But all those precautions and sentiments weren't helping Rau le Creuset any.

Andy shook his head and cast about for something to say, deciding to cut right to the point. "Look, it's really not healthy for you to spend so much time cooped up in a place like this. You need to get outside, get some fresh air and a decent meal."

Rau looked back at him, a finely cultivated, polite distaste adorning his features. "I'm to worry about what's 'healthy' now, am I?"

Andy stifled the desire to reach out and shake the blonde's shoulders, which would only elicit more poison. He reminded himself again that Rau had been locked up in this room with only the nasty medical staff and the darkness of his own mind for company.

"A lot of people are worried about you," he said softly.

Rau scoffed lightly, showing his opinion of the likeliness of _that._

"We've all been really busy trying to hammer out a treaty with the Naturals, but… they all asked me to send you their best. They say that they'll come too, if they're spared the time."

Rau remained silent, something in his flat sidelong gaze reminding Andy of the rumors that former ZAFT Chairman Patrick Zala had used his position and his outward "friendship" with the blonde commander to sexually harass him, continually. Andy still wondered about whether it was true or not, but if it was, it would certainly explain Rau's attitude about people's supposed concern for him. Either that, or it was the month he'd gone without visitors that had done it.

Or maybe an entire lifetime of being humanity's scapegoat.

In any event, Andy had to try to soothe Rau's prickles and get him up and doing something worthwhile. "They really do care, you know. Athrun and Dearka both want me to tell them what happens here; so does Yzak—hell, he's probably the most worried out of everybody. And Murrue Ramius, the former captain of what you used to call the legged ship."

Rau arched an eyebrow.

"Supposedly, Mu la Flaga told her about what happened between you guys at Colony Mendel. And she's trying to keep her mind off the fact that no one's found him yet, I suppose."

Andy tried not to smile when Rau sighed exasperatedly. "Does _everyone _know about me now?" he asked, sounding a little bit disgruntled.

"Just the people who know you personally—the ones you're on fairly good terms with and can be trusted not to spill to random passersby. Hey, the more people know about the stuff that happened in Mendel, the higher the chance that it won't happen to someone _else, _right?" Andy prodded.

"Tell that to Rey za Burrel, and try to convince _him." _Rau scowled at the far wall.

Andy rolled his eyes. "Oh, and Lacus Clyne sends her best wishes. Her, and Kira Yamato."

Rau made a "pffft" noise, stared skyward, and shook his head. The look on his face clearly stated what he thought Kira Yamato should do with his supposed concern.

"The kid's awful guilty about what he did. Says he was out of control and out of line, and a lot of stuff about if humanity has the right to choose its own course or redeem itself, then you should also have the right to hate it for what you've been put through. He's the only one who could probably get here anytime soon, but I think he's too ashamed of himself to show his face around you without somebody else to back him up."

More silence from Rau.

"Anyway, my original point is that I'd like you to join me for coffee. It'd get you out of that damn bed so you don't start getting sores, and it'd get something decent into you. Besides, then we could start talking about all the old crap that's happened… argue about it too, just like the old days." Andy folded his arms behind him, reflexively crossing the first two fingers on his left hand.

"…Why?" Rau's expression was carefully blank as he considered Andy and his offer.

"Because it'll give me company and it'll keep you sane. I'm more worried about your mental health than your physical health; your doctors say you're healing just fine. Besides… I want you to know that if you ever want to talk about anything, I'm perfectly willing to set aside the time for you."

There was a long silence.

"Come on," Andy wheedled. "Just get dressed, pop the IV out of your arm, and come on. You've taken your pain medication today, right? You don't need to worry about episodes. And if the doctors say no, I'll sneak you out anyway. I'm not going to tattle on you."

Rau stared at his hands for a few moments, then brushed his fingers through his bangs, making them flop down to cover his face.

_"Oh." _Andy felt stupid. So that was it. "If anyone stares at you, I'll knock them out myself. It's damn rude and I know how much you hate that." It was easy enough to ask anyone else to just walk down the street without shame, but Rau's deep phobia of simply being seen by human eyes had made him experience severe mental breakdowns and hysteria when he'd lost his mask in public situations. Sometimes Andy truly marveled at the way the harshness of the world and this man's own tormented but brilliant mind had worked together to cage him so severely.

Rau gave Andy a long and searching look, then nodded reluctantly. "Alright… just this once." Something fleeting and vulnerable passed over his face, but it was gone before Andy had the chance to really wonder about it.

---

"Hi, Andy!" the owner of the tiny coffee shop called, smiling. Her café was barely the size of a studio apartment, but it was well furnished, with alternating sections of tile and carpeted flooring and real home furnishings; high-backed reading chairs and sofas. The lighting was low, the tiles were a soft mauve, and the carpets were a gentle steel blue, with the chairs and sofas a matching shade of forest green. The comforting colors and darkness gave the place the perfect air of solace for what Andy was trying for.

As he headed up to the counter, Rau turned sharply and headed into one of the café's corners, sitting with his shoulders hunched on one of the sofas surrounding a circular table. His obvious attempt at diffusing any attention from himself wasn't working, however; his blonde hair and the light clothing he was wearing—khakis with a black T-shirt and white short-sleeved overshirt he'd left unbuttoned and hanging open—made him stand out almost painfully against the dark settings. Andy shook his head and continued on his way.

"Cherise, it's good to see you again. My friend and I would like a pair of coffees, black for now."

Cherise only seemed to be half listening as she wrote out the order. "That guy you're with looks familiar; who is he?"

"A soldier I barely managed to haul out of the hospital down the way," Andy replied with a shrug. "He needs to get out more, but it was a job and a half to actually get him here. He hates being stared at, and he's not exactly at his best right now."

Cherise nodded sympathetically. Andy had brought more than one shell-shocked survivor of the recent war here for a mug of coffee and a consolation talk; her little café had become quite popular among the ZAFT army's young mobile suit pilots.

"Anything else, then?"

Andy shook his head. "Not right now. I doubt he'll want anything anyway; I've heard he's been off his food for a while in that little cell they call his hospital room. But if he asks, you'll be the first to hear about it."

Cherise nodded, then turned back and frowned at Rau for a moment. "Oh my God, Andrew Waltfeld, is that—?"

Andy sighed and stared up at the ceiling. "Yes, and both he and I would appreciate it if you didn't make a fuss about him."

"People have been saying he's insane. That he's the one who was behind the Genesis…"

"He is not insane; he's a man with a lot of problems. And as I recall, Genesis was Chairman Zala's idea. So do me a favor and don't harass him, okay?"

Cherise gave him a look. "I've got more sense than that. Obviously if you're bringing him _here, _those rumors aren't true. I know you better than to think you'd bring a psycho into my establishment." Huffily, she turned and headed over to the stove behind the counter.

Shaking his head at her, Andy walked over to Rau, who luckily hadn't been paying attention and was staring off into the distance again.

"They haven't found that bastard La Flaga yet?" he asked suddenly as Andy was sitting down.

"No. He's probably dead; don't worry about him. The Dominion's cannon he was hit with is powerful enough to melt through all the armor plates on one of our Nazcas. There's no way he could've survived something like that."

"He's alive." There was such quiet certainty in Rau's voice that Andy stared at him. "If he'd died, I would know. You tell the captain of the legged ship that. He's alive alright."

The fragment of what could've been a conversation died, leaving the space between them to lapse into awkward silence. Andy considered prodding Rau a little further on the subject of Mu, then decided he would do better not to. Bringing up the man's arch nemesis was probably not the best idea.

Cherise arrived, carrying a coffeepot and two mugs. She bowed politely, then turned to both of them as she poured their drinks. "Would either of you like sugar or cream? We have milk and a few varieties of Coffee Mate as well."

"You can bring milk for me later," Andy replied, smiling. For someone who had been so astonished at finding the extremely infamous Rau le Creuset visiting her shop, Cherise had excellent control. He doubted that Rau would ever know her initial reaction. "For now I'd just like to enjoy the brew."

"Black is fine for me, but thank you," Rau said softly and politely.

Cherise nodded, then smiled to them both. "I'll be back with it in fifteen minutes, like always. …Oh, and if there's any trouble with any other customers who might come, you just tell me and I'll deal with it for you." She strode purposefully off, leaving both men nonplussed.

Finally, Andy broke out into quiet laughter. "Looks like she's adopted you," he commented to Rau, who was staring after Cherise with a completely puzzled expression.

"Pardon?"

"Cherise is just that kind of person," Andy offered. "Once she decides she likes someone, she always does what she can to take care of them. She must've recognized you and decided to take you into the fold."

Rau was silent for a moment, staring very hard at his coffee. _"…Why?" _he finally asked, still uncomprehending.

"I guess she's decided you're not as bad as people think. You're definitely not the first person with a weird reputation that's walked through her door, and she usually ends up championing them all. She's a good woman."

"Oh" was all Rau said, and the two of them fell into silence again.

Cherise came back with the coffee after a few minutes, smiled at them both, and headed off to monitor the counter once more.

Andy had just taken his first sip of the coffee (this particular brew was first-rate; he'd have to tell Cherise later) when Rau spoke.

"It's strange…"

"What's strange?" Andy asked, blinking. Ignoring his coffee, Rau was watching Cherise.

"Being… _accepted…" _The blonde man shrugged. "Few are so willing… or so forgiving. I'm a little too used to rejection to remember how to react…"

"Rejection?" Andy probed, mentally crossing fingers again.

Rau absently traced the rim of his coffee mug, frowning slightly and staring into the distance. "You know about me… you know what I was supposed to be. I was only a thing to the scientists of Mendel, even the man who I suppose was as close to a father as someone like me could ever have. And I was a thing with too many flaws for them to use." Rau shrugged. "So they simply disposed of me, as well as all of the others who didn't work out, as soon as they were finished using us for their research."

"I'd heard you lived on the street…" Andy mused. "That was true?"

Rau's smile was as bitter as the blackest coffee. "Of course. I'm surprised that they didn't kill me themselves. I'm a failure, after all, and I've gone on being one throughout my life. …I suppose I wasn't important enough even for that…"

Andy scowled. "That's such bullshit. They're the ones who screwed up—isn't it bad enough that you're the one who has to live with it? They should've done _something _to take responsibility."

"No…" Rau's cold glance flicked back to Andy. "If they had sought help for the clones and the products of other genetic experiments they had made, they would have been shut down by activist groups. And everyone knows… that there isn't much that can be done for… people like me."

"That's no excuse."

"It's the world we live in." Rau picked up his coffee mug and stared into the black liquid's ripples apathetically. "Humanity is… disgusting…"

"When it comes to stuff like that… people wanting designer babies and that other shit… I have to agree with you, actually. I'm all for there being more Coordinators in this world, but that's a really stupid reason to make us." Andy frowned. "Drink your coffee, Le Creuset. It's going to get cold, and it's good, so don't waste it."

"Yes, Mother," Rau said dryly.

Silence.

"You know what?" Andy said suddenly. "Maybe there isn't anything that can be done for you at this point, but maybe there's something _you _can do so there won't be any more like you."

Rau quirked an eyebrow at him. Undeterred, Andy went on.

"It takes a while for any of us other officers to gain the respect of our soldiers, but you're different. You just have to get up on a soapbox and talk for five minutes and whole squadrons are your drooling slaves."

Rau's gaze slid to the side as he coughed into his fist.

"So maybe I exaggerate. The point is, you have a real gift. And you don't need to be in the military to make a difference in this world if you hate it so much. If people hear your story and actually get some idea of what the guys at Mendel did to you, maybe you can make a big difference in how even the most diehard eugenics supporters view Coordinator creation and what's acceptable."

"You're suggesting I go genetics terrorist?"

Andy almost sighed in exasperation until he saw Rau's crooked smile and realized that the other man was joking. "Well, something like that. Those activist groups that would've stomped on Mendel if they'd realized you existed would totally love you." He drank more of his coffee, then grinned and reached across the table to poke Rau in the shoulder. "…Well, I'm just telling you to think about it. I think you'd be a great public speaker. You'd so rule the ass off of every other protestor in history. You could be the next Martin Luther King Jr.!"

"………"

"And didn't I tell you to drink your coffee?"

Rau shook his head. "Someday you will be eating your precious kebabs and you will bite into one that has been entirely drenched in chili sauce without your noticing it. And you will think back on this conversation and realize that you shouldn't have spent so long lecturing me, because I will have done it."

"No way you'd get past my watch. My kebabs are my temple, and I defend them viciously." Andy grinned wolfishly. "Now drink your coffee before I have to call Cherise over here."

"………" Rau did, after shaking his head again.

Cherise herself showed up a few minutes later, bearing a small plate of tiramisu that she placed carefully on the table between the two men. "You look awful," she chided Rau. "Before you leave I want to see you finish this. It's on the house, so don't worry about paying. You look as if you haven't had a decent meal for weeks."

"………" Rau gave her a look. Andy snorted.

"Eat it or pay for it," Cherise threatened, and walked away.

"She has _so _adopted you," Andy grinned.

"…Shut up…"

Watching Rau stare down at the chocolate-covered dessert and prod it tentatively with the fork on the plate, Andy mused that he'd actually managed to do a passable job with less-than-adequate materials. Maybe something could still be salvaged from the wreckage of the man named Rau le Creuset after all.

…Or maybe it was just wishful thinking.

Still, this was a good start.

-owari :3-


End file.
